Category Archives: Grad School Life & Advice

December has arrived which means the holidays are just around the corner! And for those of you non-academics who happen to have a grad student friend/family member, this serves as a rare opportunity for you to finally interact with them! Because it’s during this time of the year that we grad students find ourselves emerging from our lab/office caves to remind our friends and families that we still exist in the world. Happy times all around! Or so you think…

I’ve said it once (many times, actually) and I’ll say it again: academia can be a really shitty place when it comes to your mental health. Yes, your academic adventures can result in a variety of extremely rewarding experiences–there’s no doubt about that–but when your forced to survive this high-stress environment that expects you to juggle heavy workloads, long hours and high expectations on top of the rest of your adult life… Let’s just say that even the most dedicated students can start succumbing to the pressure.

I was warned, even before I started grad school, that there will be at least one point during my five-year PhD where I would get stuck. It might be because a key experiment won’t work for weeks on end or the data I manage to get simply isn’t adding up—whatever it was it would be a very obnoxious rough patch and getting over it definitely wouldn’t be easy. In fact, I might find myself even tempted to quit.

But young, naïve little Krystal kind of just shrugged off the thought. That won’t happen to me, I assured myself. Besides, even if it does, I’ll get over it because I’m doing what I love! That’ll be enough to pull me through, right? I just have to keep the end goal in mind! Right?

Recently, a few people asked me on Tumblr what I keep in my office or how they can step up their “cubicle-game,” as someone so hilariously called it. Well, I’m not in any cubicle, but I am very happy to answer this question since I’m one of those people that is greatly effected by my work environment. So, to show you guys all the tidbits and trinkets I surround myself with, I have taken the challenge of sneakily taking pictures of my (shared) office space without looking like a complete weirdo! I was…only mildly successful, but since that’s besides the point, on with the show! 😀 (Warning, this is a very picture and link heavy post. You have been warned.)

First off, let’s get an overview of my office, which is basically an open room with three desks set up on each side, as shown. Everyone gets a shelf, a bulletin board wall and a filing cabinet. My place is by the window because I love natural light, so if you have a choice on seating placement, keep that in mind. Here’s my office:

The school year has officially started! Well, actually, it started last week…but who’s counting, really… As, I did one of these last year and thought it would be nice to carry on the tradition of showcasing the mysteries my backpack holds! (Read: I actually have a lot to do and someone had already requested this post so this was the easy way out. I’m sorry! D: I’ll have cooler posts after fellowship season is over.)

I made a request a week ago for blog posts ideas, and this was one that made me extremely excited to write because I struggle with this all the time. In fact, when I went to a therapist to deal with anxiety issues, this was probably the number one things that was talked about during our sessions.

Hopefully when you’re reading this I’ll be somewhere in Washington DC on vacation, so even though I got some amazing blog posts ideas this week on Tumblr, I thought I’d start off September with something a bit more chill and talk about how I plan to organize my life this year.

This is essentially a compilation of all the organizational techniques I either developed last year or am trying out this year. It’s just simple tricks I use to make my planning and organization of the billions of sheets of papers I go through just a little bit less overwhelming.